"My grandmother bought my mother Maria's surname from her father, Riccardo Scicolone, with five thousand lire that my aunt Sofia Loren gave her. Scicolone had given her name only to her, while she did not want to recognize my mother. Mother suffered a lot and also me because my father Romano Mussolini was almost never there when I was little. But I have flashes of beautiful memories of him like the aviary he brought me once when I was returning from a trip. And then his music."
This is how Alessandra Mussolini talks about her life, family and career as a guest of Monica Setta on Stories of women at the crossroads, in the episode broadcast on Thursday 7 March in the second evening of Rai 2.
"Dino Risi - she continues - asked me to change my surname to make films I should have been called Alessandra Zero, but it wasn't my path. But there are some good memories like Tassinaro with Alberto Sordi. And some bad ones, like the time Valeria Golino screwed me at an audition. She made the film and not me".
Still shaken by the attack she suffered in Strasbourg ("My aunt Sofia was the first to call me to find out how I was", she says) Alessandra Mussolini then talks about her family, about her three children Romano, Caterina and Clarissa who both bear the surnames, Floriani Mussolini.
And also about her fears.
"Yes, I fear the passing of time, illnesses, death - she confesses - If I could go back I would like to be thirty years old and know that my whole life is ahead of me".
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